Dana has already led us in some fun earlier tonight as we gleefully mock Joe Biden for pretending to be a couple of missed paychecks away from the breadline (or at least having to buy a coach class ticket on Amtrak). Clearly he is trying to get in on the “I know what it’s like to be financially insecure” bandwagon that his putative 2016 rival Hillary Clinton so clumsily set in motion recently. Comes now (channeling George Will here for no particular reason) one Chelsea Clinton to indulge her inner hippie by proclaiming in a recent interview: “I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t. That wasn’t the metric of success that I wanted in my life.”

It seems to be all the rage these days: Democrats jumping on the Poor, poor me! bandwagon. We recently saw Hillary claim that when she and Bill left the White House, they were “dead broke”. And now, Joe Biden remarked in a summit on working families that, not only is he the poorest man in Congress, but that he has no savings.

When discussing the struggles that working parents experience as they balance their careers and family time, Biden told the audience, “I can speak a little bit from my own experience.”

Though he noted that he is wearing a “mildly expensive suit” and has a good pension and salary, the vice president said, “I don’t own a single stock or bond . . . I have no savings account.”

Except that he does. Of course, he may later come back and qualify that he meant savings in his piggy bank…Just Joe being Joe! (For more of Joe’s ‘stories’, visit the “Being Biden” page at the White House official website).

In light of 2016, is it any surprise that Clinton and Biden are attempting to reach – and be – the common man with their own financial um, struggles?

UPDATE via Fox News: Facebook promptly shut down a cluster of pages that peddled T-Shirts, hoodies and action figures touting the murderous terror organization ISIS after FoxNews.com contacted the social media giant to ask why they had not been flagged.

With more than 9,000 likes on Facebook, retailer Zirah Moslem on its website calls itself a purveyor of “Islamic style” and sells clothing that promotes a range of Islamist groups.

In one design, emblazoned with the slogan “Mujahideen Around the World/ United We Stand”, figures wearing keffiyeh and brandishing weapons pose like characters on a Hollywood movie poster.

Other T-shirts promote the Taliban and Hamas, both named as terrorist organisations by the US state department.

Kaos Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (Isis) sells T-shirts under the outdoor wear/sporting goods section with the name Isis alongside pictures of Kalashnikov rifles and a globe, presumably signifying the group’s plans for world domination.

Other Indonesia-based companies selling jihad-themed clothing online include Kavkaz Struggle Wear, which sells T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “I Love Jihad” in English and Arabic, and Rezji Islamic Clothing and Shop, which advertises small figures of Isis fighters, which come with a free sticker.

Isis’s bloody exploits in Iraq, where it is battling government forces for control of swathes of the country, have won it supporters among Indonesia’s Sunni Muslim population.

“They see that Isis has succeeded in some areas in Syria and Iraq,” Jakarta based terrorism expert Solahudin said. “They’ve already declared an Islamic state there. A caliphate is the ultimate goal for every jihadist in Indonesia.”

Lois Lerner’s computer allegedly crashed in June 2011, just ten days after House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp first wrote a letter asking if the IRS was engaging in targeting of nonprofit groups. Two months later, Sonasoft’s contract ended and the IRS gave its email-archiving contractor the boot.

The contract, which came to light through the efforts of our pal Morgen Richmond, had been renewed every year since 2005. But when investigators came sniffing, all of a sudden backups seemed less important. Funny, that.

“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.”

This adviser continued: “Hillary told Obama, ‘Mr. President, that story isn’t credible. Among other things, it ignores the fact that the attack occurred on 9/11.’ But the president was adamant. He said, ‘Hillary, I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.’”

After her conversation with the president, Hillary called Bill Clinton, who was at his penthouse apartment in the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, and told him what Obama wanted her to do.

“I’m sick about it,” she said, according to the legal adviser, who was filled in on the conversation.

This is all according to a new book by Edward Klein, who goes on to describe a conversation between Hillary and Bill (related by the adviser) in which they discussed how ridiculous the story was, and debated whether Hillary should resign over it. Ultimately, according to the book, she didn’t — and decided to put out the press release as requested by Obama.

It was a Hard Choice.

It’s hard to know what to make of this. Lefties will claim that the book is from right-wing Regnery Publishing. That is irrelevant, but the fact that this “adviser” is not named is of concern. If this person has the goods, he or she owes it to the American people to come forward.

“But they don’t see me as part of the problem,” she protests, “because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work,” she says, letting off another burst of laughter. If past form is any guide, she must be finding my question painful.

Although there has always been crushing poverty in Central America, violence in the region has escalated in recent years. For example, Honduras has the most murders per capita of any country.

Drug cartels and gangs are at the root of the increased violence. Some of these children are fleeing gang initiations, according to several reports.

But not all the children fleeing the region are arriving in the U.S. They are also looking for refuge in Mexico and other nations, such as Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Meanwhile, false rumors are circulating throughout Central America that the U.S. is giving families and children traveling solo permisos, that is, documents to permanently reside in the U.S.

It’s amazing that they got around to mentioning the false rumors at all. What is less amazing is that they don’t mention any connection at all to Barack Obama’s policy of not deporting children who meet certain criteria. As I have already told you, an internal Border Patrol memo states that a “high percentage” of the immigrants are coming because it is rumored that illegal immigrants with children are receiving “permisos” — official documents allowing them to stay.

Illegal immigrants from Central America are surging across the U.S.-Mexico border because they believe they can take advantage of American immigration policy and gain at least a tentative foothold in the country, according to an internal Border Patrol intelligence memo.

The immigrants come seeking “permisos,” which apparently are the “notices to appear,” the legal documents given to non-Mexicans caught at the border, according to the memo, which was viewed by The Washington Times and raised several times Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Those notices officially put the immigrants into deportation proceedings. The immigrants usually are released to await a court date, giving them a chance to fade into the shadows in the interior of the U.S.

The L.A. Times Q&A does confirm that the newly arrived illegal children are generally released into the population, especially if they have relatives here:

An estimated 65% of the children are placed with a sponsor — usually a family member, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. The federal government has reported that the number may be higher, between 85% and 90%, according to Kids in Need of Defense, an advocacy organization that works to find pro bono representation for these children.

Does that mean all these Central American children are allowed to stay indefinitely after they reunite with family?

No. From the time an unaccompanied child is taken into immigration custody, he or she is under removal proceedings. The child receives a Notice to Appear in immigration court, where he or she can ask to stay.

Yeah, technically. But when the government catches you and lets you go, a lot of those people aren’t going to come to court. Of course, exact statistics are not available — embarrassing statistics never are available from this administration.

DHS will exercise prosecutorial discretion as appropriate to ensure that enforcement resources are not expended on low priority cases, such as individuals who came to the United States as children and meet other key guidelines.

“This information is apparently common knowledge in Central America and is spread by word of mouth and international and local media,” the memo reads. “A high percentage of the subjects interviewed stated their family members in the U.S. urged them to travel immediately, because the United States government was only issuing immigration ‘permisos’ until the end of June 2014.”

When I first reported that, many of us were confused: why the reference to June 2014? Things get a little clearer when you visit the Department of Homeland Security page on how children can get around immigration laws. To seek to stay under Obama’s unilateral “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” policy, among other things, you have to have been arrived before June 15, 2007, and have been present on June 15, 2012. The repeated references to June, I believe, have apparently been miscommunicated to Central Americans as “you must arrive before the end of June 2014,” precipitating the current flood.

Whether that speculation is correct or not, it is definitely being spread by word of mouth that they’re letting people go after they get here. I have a hunch that’s good enough for most illegals.

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